busy June days

Between Sports Day, sum­mer con­certs, sleep­over guests, din­ner guests, yikes there is a lot to remem­ber this month. I am begin­ning to have that slight­ly fran­tic feel­ing that is famil­iar from oth­er end-of-schoolyear times, when I real­ly don’t want to think any­more about what cloth­ing needs to go in Avery’s gym bag, what lunch she needs for the barn, what per­mis­sion slips to go see Damien Hirst’s dia­mond-cov­ered skull next week, tick­ets for the school pro­duc­tion of “Peter Pan,” deposits for next year’s school trip (heav­ens, they just got home from this year’s!).

Plus I’ve got us tick­ets to see “Gaslight” with the delec­table Rosamund Pike. I remem­ber lov­ing the film, so I can only imag­ine we’ll all love the play. I have as well a tick­et for me to go all by my lone­some to see my revered crush Matthew Mac­fadyen LIVE on stage in “The Pain and the Itch.” I’ve nev­er seen him per­form live before, so I am plan­ning to be quite over­whelmed. John is very nice­ly putting up with my fevered enthu­si­asm, with­out pre­tend­ing in the least to share it. He and Avery will go and see her beloved form teacher Miss Leslie per­form a cel­lo con­cert instead, which will be a per­fect evening for everyone.

Speak­ing of which, the school sum­mer con­cert was absolute­ly won­der­ful, at the love­ly Hinde Methodist Church in Maryle­bone. Avery report­ed breath­less­ly after the final rehearsal that lit­tle Mol­ly in Form Three faint­ed from the heat and had to be tak­en home, but by the time the con­cert began, it was very pleas­ant and we sat upstairs to get the best view (John being unof­fi­cial pho­tog­ra­ph­er for King’s Col­lege!). The high­light, I think, was the whole choir singing “Green Eggs and Ham” with enor­mous gus­to, to huge applause, so much so that Miss Potts the music mis­tress turned to the audi­ence and said, “That was so won­der­ful, and the gulls enjoyed per­form­ing it so much: would you like to hear it again?” That’s genius, work­ing with chil­dren, to be spon­ta­neous and cel­e­bra­to­ry. Dar­ling Miss Leslie, their form mis­tress, had also showed that sort of spir­it ear­li­er in the day dur­ing Latin lessons, Avery told us. “Sophia start­ed off with her recita­tion using a fun­ny accent, and after that Miss Leslie told us we all need­ed to have a fun­ny voice for our read­ings, too.” I love that school.

Let’s see, what else is keep­ing us busy? Well, a film crew spent all of Thurs­day in our street film­ing a movie with a cast of… well, almost no one I’d ever heard of, except Vin­nie Jones whose name sound­ed vague­ly famil­iar and then I was pret­ty sure I saw him. “Black leather jack­et and slicked back hair, Mum­my? Yep, that sounds like a ‘Vin­nie’ to me.” Giv­en that the film turns out to be called “The Heavy,” it seems high­ly unlike­ly that any of us will see it, but still. Unknown actors or no, it was excit­ing to be trudg­ing home from the sta­ble with Avery, drag­ging all her clob­ber, and to come upon a real film set, and to be held back from walk­ing down our street. “If you could wait here, just for a moment, they’re film­ing right now, and then you’ll be on your way. Thank you SO much,” gushed the lit­tle go-fer with a clip­board and a walkie-talkie. A far cry from the film crews who used to clut­ter up our old street in Tribeca with alarm­ing fre­quen­cy, drop­ping their craft ser­vices lit­ter on our stoop, crouch­ing out­side our door so that we could not get in, and gen­er­al­ly behav­ing as if it were their street, not ours.

Avery’s deep in the Form Five test prep for next year’s all-impor­tant exam­i­na­tions to get into senior school. I con­tin­ue to lag behind in the ambi­tion stakes, play­ing as ever the role of slack­er moth­er who sim­ply can­not get into the com­pet­i­tive spir­it on behalf of my child. Grant­ed, I spend most ear­ly evenings cook­ing din­ner while Avery does her home­work at the kitchen table, and cer­tain­ly my ears prick up if I hear, “Mum­my, can you help me with…” But in gen­er­al my heart is not in hov­er­ing over her with her work. This atti­tude seems to have trick­led down to Avery her­self, who after report­ing how she and one of her lit­tle chums had done on a prac­tice exam said, “Her mum­my assigned her essays to write on every day of the half-term hol­i­day, and then her mum­my cor­rect­ed them and they revised them togeth­er.” Yikes. “Do you think I should be doing that with you, dar­ling?” I asked. “No, not real­ly. The way I see it, the oth­er lit­tle girl is like… a hot­house orchid, a real­ly well-tend­ed flower. Where­as I am… a wild rose, just occur­ring nat­u­ral­ly in the gar­den.” Hmmm. I went a lit­tle fur­ther and asked, “Do you think it would be bet­ter to be an orchid than a rose? I hap­pen to real­ly like ros­es, but your Non­na loves orchids.” She thought a minute, and said, “No, ros­es aren’t bet­ter than orchids, and orchids aren’t bet­ter than ros­es. It’s more a mat­ter of the kind of flower you like and the kind of gar­den­er you are. And I think your gar­den­ing suits me.”

I looked over at her, sit­ting beside me in the car, with her hair blow­ing all over since we had the top down on such a pret­ty day. It seemed there could­n’t be a nicer mater­nal moment. But of course John, upon hear­ing the sto­ry, is flex­ing his prun­ing shears and buy­ing com­post as we speak. Well, one of us should be pay­ing atten­tion, I guess.

All right, a cel­e­bra­to­ry evening beck­ons. Avery has achieved her Sil­ver in her skat­ing instruc­tion, and a scoop of Baskin Rob­bins “Grand Slam” is being con­sumed as we speak. She has been work­ing so hard on those spins and triple what­ev­ers that, as much as I dis­like the skat­ing rink, I have to be proud of her. I must go pre­pare my broiled salmon, cous­cous with pine nuts, orange pep­pers and red onion, and sauteed sug­ar snap peas. Both the salmon and the cous­cous are exper­i­ments, so if they’re good, I’ll pro­vide recipes. And… last night Vin­cent con­vinced me to take part in some home­made piz­za dough-mak­ing (at Vin­cen­t’s house the phrase “we’ll have piz­za” does not involve a card­board take­away box, need­less to say). So I am the proud pos­ses­sor, this evening, of a bag of “strong” flour, and a box of yeast. Tomor­row will see me play­ing around with herbs to add to the dough, and one hopes I will pro­duce a side dish wor­thy of the shoul­der of pork repos­ing in my fridge. Stay tuned.